So it seems that poker night has become my new ''Lets find a new beer that we haven't tried before and see what happens while we play cards'' night. Last week I took a chance with one and did fairly well, so I figured why not do it again? So this week I took a little more time than usual and hit a store that I knew for a fact had a nice selection that was still somewhat on the way to the game. I did a bit of browsing and after a few ''pick ups and put downs'', I settled in on the Harpoon IPA from Harpoon Brewery. My main reasoning behind this selection was the fact that their Leviathan series of brews are so tasty, I figured they just had to have a good tasting baseline of brews.

So once again, there really isn't much I can say as far as how it looked because I had to do the straight from the bottle method. While I am not too happy about it, there really isn't much that can be done in situations such as this. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and suck it down. Now I did try to give it a good go as far as smells are concerned, and all I was really able to pick up on were some faint grapefruit notes, and a few grassy highlights. There might have been some light bread notes in there as well, but it was requiring a lot of focus on my part to even recognize them, let alone pinpoint them. I think if I had been able to glass it up, the malt layer might have had a bit more of a fighting chance, but this aspect may just have to wait until another day when a glass and more devotion time is available.

The first sip of it offered up much of what the nose suggested, in the way of being pretty citrus forward, but not overly aggressive or violent. There was just a nice grapefruit forward flavor that did come with a bit of pine mixed in, but the pine took some real focus to detect. As the sip count rose, I was able to pick up on a bit of a bready caramel malt layer that provided a nice balance within the beer, and it managed to hold its own from about the midway point of the bottle to the end. Even though there wasn't a lot more as far as flavors go, the overall feel of it was just an all around sessionable I.P.A., which was exactly what I was looking for when I initially set out on my ''end up with a good beer for poker night'' trip.

The term ''baseline brew'' sometimes loses a lot as far as translation goes, and many times people tend to look down on brews that get labeled as such. That really is too bad, because in my world all it means is that you have a beer that meets all the criteria of the selected style. Beers like the Harpoon I.P.A. are exactly what I am talking about when I say this. All of the requirements are there, with none of the added fluff to dig through and sort out. It is just a good, baseline I.P.A. I'm sure that the folks over at Harpoon Brewery would have no problem with this sort of designation, and neither should you. I can easily suggest the Harpoon I.P.A. to all levels of drinkers, with it being a great session brew for the more experienced drinkers, and a great intro to the style brew for those still new to the game. Feel free to give it a try if it crosses your path, because it will in no way leave you disappointed.